Francis Plagne

Other people’s interpretations of the familiar, as bizarrely as they come across, are what draw me into music. Hearing a musician provide their own take, rather than mimicry, of a style or concept can create a parallel universe so intricately constructed that – for the time spent in that world – no alternative seems possible, let alone desirable. This is where Melbourne teenager Francis Plagne’s sophomore record succeeds.

Creating a parallel pop universe, Francis Plagne* sounds as close to *Pet Sounds* era Beach Boys as it does a *musique concr’te* future classic or an exercise in folk collage. Through it Plagne builds a new world order, picking up portions of his musical ideas and piecing them together with a complex thought process and even more convoluted progression. It’s a curious marriage, as pop sounds are kept while pop constructs avoided, leaving in their stead the uncomfortable dismissal of linearity. The self-important pop purveyor would call it musical na’vet?, but Plagne’s pop-compositions suggest something else – on *Francis Plagne he demonstrates a continually evolving musical maturity where the conceptual and accessible aren’t mutually exclusive.